The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Bougainvillea Cemetery Marker Transcription: Resolving Clayton A. Denmark (1883–1982) and Lulah Inez Denmark (d. 1952)

Digital cemetery transcriptions and online genealogical indices for Bougainvillea Cemetery in Avon Park have long cataloged an apparent pioneer child’s grave under the name Clayton A. Denmark, recorded with the dates 18 December 1883 to 29 November 1892 (aged 8).[fg-denmark-marker] This entry positioned Denmark as the second-earliest marked grave in the cemetery and the only marked child’s burial surviving from the town’s charter decade after infant Hulda Stenstrom’s interment in October 1888.

Direct physical examination of the headstone, combined with surviving railroad employment records, municipal histories, and family obituaries, demonstrates that the 1892 date is a 90-year transcription error. The carved stone marks the grave of Clayton A. Denmark (1883–1982), who lived to age ninety-eight, served as an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad station agent in Avon Park, and was buried in the mid-to-late twentieth century alongside his wife, Lulah Inez Denmark (d. 1952).[maxwell-1976][fg-lulah-denmark]

The 2009 Transcription Error

In April 2009, amateur cemetery researcher Grace Younglove Hudson conducted a photographic survey of Bougainvillea Cemetery, creating digital memorials for hundreds of graves, including Memorial 35726262 for Clayton A. Denmark.[fg-denmark-marker] Hudson transcribed the stone’s carved death date as 29 November 1892, leading digital database software to automatically calculate his age as eight years old.

High-resolution inspection of the physical monument reveals an entirely different reading:

  1. Physical Typology: The monument is a flush, lawn-level rectangular gray granite marker set level with the turf. Lawn-level markers of this design became standard in American memorial parks and municipal cemeteries during the mid-twentieth century and were not produced or permitted in pioneer 1890s rural Florida cemeteries, where vertical white marble tablets predominated.
  2. Masonry Inscription: The lettering is machine-sandblasted in modern condensed sans-serif Roman capitals, flanking a centered Latin cross: 
    CLAYTON A. DENMARK
DEC 18 1883  [Latin Cross]  NOV 29 1982
  3. The Disputed Digit: The death year is carved as 1982. The third digit consists of two fully closed, symmetrical round loops—identical in design to the numeral 8 in 18 and 1883 on the birth date line. A numeral 9 in this stonecutter’s font features an open lower stem curving downward, as seen in the second digit of 1982. Hudson’s transcription inverted the positions of the 8 and 9 or misread 1982 through the mental expectation created by the 1883 birth year, inadvertently manufacturing a nineteenth-century child casualty out of a late-twentieth-century nonagenarian.

Family Lineage and North Florida Origins

Clayton A. Denmark was born on 18 December 1883 in Perry, Taylor County, Florida, the son of Corporal John Newton Denmark (1843–1926), a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, and Lavicy V. Parker Denmark (1854–1910).[fg-lessie-agner]

Clayton grew up in Perry as part of a prominent North Florida family with eleven children:

  • Florence Sarah Denmark (1875–1974), who lived to age 99
  • Thomas Alvin Denmark (1876–1955)
  • Redden William Denmark (1880–1969)
  • Allie Denmark Ratliff (1881–1908)
  • Clayton A. Denmark (1883–1982)
  • Sidney Albert Denmark Sr. (1886–1973)
  • Newton Ira Denmark (1892–1978)
  • Burta Denmark (1894–1899)
  • Lessie Lee Denmark Agner (1898–1986)[fg-lessie-agner]
  • Martha Denmark Ratliff
  • Ida Denmark Messer

Clayton attended Taylor County High School in Perry, appearing in the documented school photograph of the Class of 1904 alongside classmates Hattie Smith and Carrabelle Morgan when he was approximately twenty years old.[perry-news-herald-1904]

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Career in Avon Park

After completing his education, Denmark entered commercial railroad service with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL). In September 1911, he married Mattie Williams in Jasper, Hamilton County, Florida; the marriage was subsequently dissolved in chancery court proceedings in Escambia County in the autumn of 1918.

On 21 December 1919, Denmark remarried in Bristol, Liberty County, Florida, taking as his second wife Lula Inez Kelly (ca. 1884/86–1952), a native of Alabama.[fl-marriage-denmark-kelly-1919] The couple settled into long-term residence in Central Florida, raising two daughters, Winifred J. Denmark (Wendt) and Patricia Ann Denmark (Curry). Before establishing his household in Avon Park, Denmark resided in Waverly, an unincorporated citrus and packing community in eastern Polk County along the Atlantic Coast Line’s Haines City-to-Sebring branch line.[lakeland-ledger-1964-01-07]

When the Atlantic Coast Line extended its branch line into Avon Park in 1912, the railroad constructed a passenger and freight station along the line.[maxwell-1976] A. E. Conoley served as the initial agent, with L. M. Marsh as section foreman and W. D. Cameron managing the extra work gang. Local history records that Denmark was transferred to the Avon Park station as an Atlantic Coast Line agent:

“The Coastline built a station. A. E. Conoley was sent as the first agent… Other agents for the Coast Line were C. A. Denmark and J. N. McDugald who was the agent when the Coast Line merged with the Seaboard Railroad in 1967. The Coastline station was torn down in 1970.”[maxwell-1976]

Denmark remained in Avon Park following his railroad service. In January 1964, the Lakeland Ledger recorded a social visit by Denmark to friends in Waverly, identifying him explicitly as “C. A. Denmark of Avon Park… a former resident of Waverly.”[lakeland-ledger-1964-01-07] A decade later, on 2 January 1975, the Levy County Journal published the obituary of his 99-year-old sister, Sarah F. Denmark of Williston, specifically listing her surviving siblings as three sisters in Dowling Park and Williston, brother Ira Denmark of Williston, and “Clayton Denmark of Avon Park.”[levy-county-journal-1975-01-02]

The Companion Grave of Lulah Inez Denmark (d. 1952)

Clayton Denmark’s placement in Bougainvillea Cemetery directly corresponds to the earlier interment of his wife, Lulah Inez Denmark, who died in 1952.[fg-lulah-denmark]

Her grave is marked by a horizontal white concrete or marble slab lying flat upon the turf, bearing the simple incised inscription:

LULAH INEZ DENMARK
DIED
1952

The slab suffered an early vertical fracture between the words LULAH and INEZ that was subsequently repaired with white mortar.[fg-lulah-denmark] Grace Younglove Hudson cataloged Lulah Inez Denmark’s grave on 10 April 2009 under Memorial 35726077—the exact same afternoon she surveyed Clayton Denmark’s adjacent stone (Memorial 35726262), proving the two markers form a contiguous mid-twentieth-century family plot.

When Clayton Denmark died on 29 November 1982 at age ninety-eight, he was interred beside Lulah in the family plot, and his estate or surviving relatives installed the flush granite marker bearing his full birth and death dates.

Revision of Bougainvillea Cemetery Pioneer Chronology

The resolution of the Clayton A. Denmark headstone removes him entirely from the nineteenth-century pioneer cohort of Bougainvillea Cemetery. This correction resolves the historical anomaly of a supposed 1892 child casualty whose family was completely absent from the 1889 charter town rosters, the 1895 state census, the 1900 federal census for Precinct 11, and the early tax assessment rolls of De Soto and Highlands counties.

With Denmark’s removal, the count of surviving marked gravestones erected between the cemetery’s 1888 dedication and the close of 1901 is adjusted from seven to six:

  1. Hulda Stenstrom (13 July 1888 – 6 October 1888): Three-month-old infant daughter of Swedish settlers John C. and Augusta Stenstrom; the first recorded burial in Avon Park.[fg-denmark-marker][maxwell-1976]
  2. Anna Daugherty (1 April 1819 – 3 December 1892): Wife of charter settler William F. Daugherty (1827–1904), dying at age seventy-three; the earliest surviving marked adult burial in the cemetery, inscribed “It is well with her soul.”
  3. William F. Smith (10 January 1823 – 2 March 1893): Early merchant family patriarch, dying at age seventy.
  4. Sarah Wheeler Abbott (1826 – 1898): Matriarch of the pioneer Abbott citrus family, dying at age seventy-two.
  5. Elizabeth Ross (12 May 1829 – 25 April 1899): Mother-in-law of Arthur W. Sargent, dying at age sixty-nine.
  6. James W. Woodruff (22 March 1819 – 26 December 1901): Patriarch of the Woodruff household, dying at age eighty-two.

Anna Daugherty is now recognized as the second-earliest surviving marked grave in Bougainvillea Cemetery, having died just two months after the fourth anniversary of infant Stenstrom’s burial.

References

  • maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida. 1976. the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md
  • fg-denmark-marker — Find a Grave contributors. Clayton A. Denmark (18 Dec 1883 - 29 Nov 1982), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 35726262, photographed by Grace Younglove Hudson. 10 April 2009. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35726262/clayton-a-denmark
  • fg-lulah-denmark — Find a Grave contributors. Lulah Inez Denmark (d. 1952), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 35726077, photographed by Grace Younglove Hudson. 10 April 2009. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35726077/lulah-denmark
  • levy-county-journal-1975-01-02 — Levy County Journal. Obituary of Sarah F. Denmark, Levy County Journal, 2 January 1975, page 1. 2 January 1975. University of Florida Digital Collections, UF00028309/02486
  • lakeland-ledger-1964-01-07 — Lakeland Ledger. Social Notes, Lakeland Ledger, 7 January 1964, page 8. 7 January 1964. University of Florida Digital Collections, UF00079940/00083
  • perry-news-herald-1904 — Perry News-Herald. Taylor County High School Class of 1904, Perry News-Herald. 25 September 2020. University of Florida Digital Collections, UF00028293/00819
  • fg-lessie-agner — Find a Grave contributors. Lessie Lee Denmark Agner (1898–1986), Bixler Memorial Gardens West, Find a Grave memorial 135917404. 14 September 2014. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135917404/lessie_lee-agner
  • fl-marriage-denmark-kelly-1919 — Liberty County Clerk of the Circuit Court. Marriage Record of C. A. Denmark and Lula Kelly, 21 December 1919, Bristol, Liberty County, Florida. 21 December 1919. Florida County Marriages, 1830–1993, Liberty County Marriage Register, Bristol, Florida, 21 December 1919

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (Held at the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum, Avon Park, Florida) (1976) · book
  2. Find a Grave contributors, Clayton A. Denmark (18 Dec 1883 - 29 Nov 1982), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 35726262, photographed by Grace Younglove Hudson (2009) · secondary
  3. Find a Grave contributors, Lulah Inez Denmark (d. 1952), Bougainvillea Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 35726077, photographed by Grace Younglove Hudson (2009) · secondary
  4. Levy County Journal, Obituary of Sarah F. Denmark, Levy County Journal, 2 January 1975, page 1 (University of Florida Digital Collections, UF00028309/02486) (1975) · newspaper
  5. Lakeland Ledger, Social Notes, Lakeland Ledger, 7 January 1964, page 8 (University of Florida Digital Collections, UF00079940/00083) (1964) · newspaper
  6. Perry News-Herald, Taylor County High School Class of 1904, Perry News-Herald (University of Florida Digital Collections, UF00028293/00819) (2020) · newspaper
  7. Find a Grave contributors, Lessie Lee Denmark Agner (1898–1986), Bixler Memorial Gardens West, Find a Grave memorial 135917404 (2014) · secondary
  8. Liberty County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Marriage Record of C. A. Denmark and Lula Kelly, 21 December 1919, Bristol, Liberty County, Florida (Florida County Marriages, 1830–1993, Liberty County Marriage Register, Bristol, Florida, 21 December 1919) (1919) · official

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